“I just—” I just remembered a way to get you to talk with me longer. “I just remembered I have the diary and the recipe book with me.” I pulled the two small books out of the pockets of my hoodie.
Fellowes clicked his tongue even as he eyed the books eagerly. “And here I thought you were just happy to see me.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Oscar
“Twelve pages of party plans,” Weems groaned, leaning back in his chair. “Why did she want to throw a dinner party when she hated everyone in the whole town?”
I flipped to the next page in the recipe book. “Well, if this belonged to her, maybe she needed to get rid of a surplus of fruit. Nearly every page has something to do with peaches, apples, apricots, pears…” A yawn struggled out, loud and unwelcome. “Sorry. Slept like shit last night,” I admitted.
Weems pressed his finger gently to the page he’d been reading, holding his place, and regarded me with a thoughtful stare that did all sorts of things for my professor kink. “Did your lack of sleep have anything to do with your abilities?”
“Are you asking me if a ghost kept me up?”
He tilted his head side to side. “Maybe. Yes. Yes, that’s what I’m asking.”
“Look at you, experiencing personal growth and not suggesting I take melatonin right off the bat.”
“I’m trying, okay? After…after earlier. Not just the billiard room but what happened in the library.”
I wanted to move around the table and hug him, at least put an arm around his shoulders. Something to comfort him, ground him a little. Instead, I tucked my hands firmly under my elbows so I wouldn’t reach out for him, but I couldn’t stop myself from tilting forward a little like a plant seeking the light. “I can’t pretend to know what it’s like, experiencing this for the first time after a lifetime of doubt. No,” I corrected when he started to protest. “Not doubt. Certainty. You’ve been certain for your entire life that this was all fantasy at best, criminal at worst. I can’t imagine how it must be doing your head in, but I can offer guidance, if you’ll accept it.”
A small, bitter smile touched his lips. “You offering to mentor me, Obi Wan? Teach me your ways?”
“First of all, do not even try to out snark me, old man. I was born into snark. Molded in it. You merely adopted it.”
“Really? Going for the Bane quote this early on? Okay, I’ll allow it. What’s the second thing?”
“The second thing is there is no second thing.”
“Cake is a lie?” He winked. “I’ll see your Bane and raise you Portal.”
“Mutual geek cred established. We’ve leveled up and unlocked valuable player back story.”
I snorted a laugh and reached for my cold mug, a sturdy thing emblazoned with the Bettina town crest, frowning when I realized it was empty. “Damn it. I don’t want to start more water but I need more caffeine.”
The camp stove rattled, the knob for the front burner turning one click to the right ineffectually. Weems tensed across from me, his entire body turning into one giant knot of low key panic. Finally, he said, “I detached the fuel bottles. Thanks, though.” His words only shook a little. “Is it… Is it the maid then?” he asked, still facing the stove though he was straining to see me from the corner of his eye. “I don’t see anything.”
It didn’t feel like the maid. This was a newer energy, a twist of happiness mingling with the chill of death. “No,” I finally said. “And I don’t see them either. But I can feel them. And they’re not here to scare us.”
“I feel like that’s something all ghosts would say, even the ones that were intent on scaring people,” he said, still shaky but not as bad as before. He licked his lips, eyes firmly on the camp stove as he spoke. “Maybe we should move this to the study for a bit. There’s more light in there.”
A soft giggle tickled my ears. Weems didn’t seem to notice it. Whoever our kitchen ghost was, they thought Weems was adorably awkward. Same, ghost. Same. We gathered the books and Weems ‘let’ me wash out our cups and set them on the drainboard to dry. I pushed the stove further back from the edge of the counter and made sure the fuel canisters were set far away from the stove itself. Just in case. It would be exceedingly rare for a spirit to do something like hook the canisters back up and cause a problem, but it made Weems relax a fraction to see the precaution taken and it was no skin off my nose to do it for him. We set up again in the downstairs study, much closer this time. “Am I to protect you from the ghosts?” I teased gently. He rolled his eyes and nudged me with his shoulder as we settled on the floor with the books on a pouf between us.
“I was just thinking maybe I should sit somewhere they can’t sneak up on me but then I remembered…”
“They’re ghosts,” I supplied. “That’s what they’re known for.”
He shook his head slowly, fiddling with the diary until he found his lost place. “I don’t know how I’ll deal with this in the long run,” he admitted. “Bear with me, okay?”
“Of course. Only a raging asshole would expect you to be instantly okay with things.”
He smiled down at the diary, skimming the page with the tip of his finger as he read. I stared for probably too long before making myself look back at the recipe book. “Lots of peaches,” I muttered. “So many damn peaches.”
“Peaches are good,” he protested mildly, flipping the diary page over. “One of my favorite things to eat.”
My thoughts took a very dirty turn, remembering him eating that damn fruit earlier, thinking of all the implications in his nibbling, sucking, licking, and feeling like a pervert for thinking there could be implications and not just a man eating a piece of fruit. I glanced up to find him staring at me. He wasn’t smiling, not really, but there was something in his expression that was decidedly playful. “I noticed,” I said quietly. “You seemed to enjoy that one earlier today.”
“It was very juicy. And sweet. And sticky.” His tongue darted out to wet his lower lip and fuck me if I didn’t want to chase it with my own. “I have to confess that I am terrible at flirting and that seemed like a really great idea at the time but I’ve been given to understand that it was fairly ridiculous.” He turned another page, ears turning red as he flicked his gaze back down to the book and away from me. A sweep of something powerful ran through me—the knowledge I made this man nervous. That little bit of awareness made made me bold. I wanted more of it, more of Weems—Julian, I corrected myself, because if this was going to happen I was not going to call him Weems in the throes of passion—being nervous, being willing to step out of his safe bubble and stretch towards me even if it was just a little bit.
“Who told you that?”
“Ah. That would be my sister.” Flip. “Oh, hey, something that’s not a dinner party! Apparently, our diarist is quite annoyed that she’s pregnant. I was right,” he added, grinning up at me. “Definitely a woman. She refers to herself as the most miserable mother to be in all of New England.”
Welp. There was a mood killer. Well, maybe not killer. But definitely put the mood into a light coma. “Was she living here, then? For her diary to be hidden upstairs, she was either living here or someone had it and didn’t want anyone to read it.”
He paged ahead. “A few pages of one line entries, hating her pregnancy, hating the… Wow. She refers to her unborn child as the devilish parasite sucking me dry, destroying me from the inside out, my curse and damnation. Jesus. I don’t get along great with my mom but I don’t think she’s ever called me a curse and damnation, even when I… Well. Even when things were horrible.”
I moved around the table to sit next to him, reading over his shoulder with my chest pressed to his arm.
Okay, so maybe the mood wasn’t so much in a light coma as it had a stubbed toe and was proceeding with caution.
Julian cleared his throat, his ears a brilliant pink I wanted to taste with the tip of my tongue. I leaned down a bit, pressing into him, and breathed in the orange-clove scent of his soap and the salt-sw
eet-warm of his skin. When he spoke, his voice wavered just a tiny bit but it wasn’t with the fear of earlier. “The entry is dated about a month before the first death,” he pointed out. “Damn, I wish we could get to the historic society or even the library in Bettina. I bet we could dig up something there.”
“You seem to be enjoying this,” I said softly, letting my breath tickle against his ear. He shuddered but didn’t move away. In fact, he leaned a bit more into me.
“I enjoy research,” he said, tilting his head just a little to the left, baring the soft spot where his jaw curved. “Discovering new things…” He slowly turned the next page. We were both barely breathing, afraid of a misstep even as we both strained towards the same goal.
At least I hoped it was the same goal.
It was about to be hellishly awkward if it wasn’t.
“Oh!” He straightened suddenly, pushing me back as he leaned across the table to grab the recipe book. “Look here!” He fluttered through the pages of recipes until he found one near the middle for something called Calming Tisane. It called for a ridiculous amount of herbs and ground nuts to be steeped in the juice of several peaches and mixed with chunks of dried apricot. “The diarist has this same recipe.”
It was under the scrawled heading For Lucinda. “Lucinda was Matthew’s wife, the first one to die.”
“It sounds like it’d be disgustingly sweet,” he remarked. “All that juice and dried fruit, then mixed in with black tea and honey?”
“Adding the ground nuts would probably have tempered it a bit. Though it still sounds positively vile.”
“And nothing in there is particularly calming,” he added. He rose to his knees and rummaged in one pocket, producing a rumpled receipt. “It’s not the best option for use with historic documents but needs must.” He tore two strips from the receipt and marked each page before turning on to the next. I sighed and resigned myself to another run of having to be responsible and actually do what I’d been hired to do, though I did resume my position pressed against Julian’s arm as we scanned pages together. “Huh. Weird.”
“What?”
“A week or so after the tea recipe, she writes that she’s taken up a new hobby.”
“Why is that weird? She sounds like she needed one.”
“It’s just such a change in tone. She’s painting porcelain and goes on for a full page about how she’s made a set for Hendricks House where she’s decorated the cups and matching saucers with images of the various fruit tree blossoms from the orchards and conservatory. She’s also made a list of homemade fixatives she’s been attempting to ensure the designs stay on the china and don’t wash away easily with use. Crafty lady, isn’t she…”
“She was obsessed with fruit.”
“Pure speculation here but it’s likely the fruit was important to her for some reason, maybe it was symbolic of Hendricks House to her. Or, based on her earlier entries, she associated the trees with Matthew Hendricks. She was clearly obsessed with him and might have still been so, even at this point despite her marriage and pregnancy.”
“Why would she want to give a tea set to the man who jilted her? I will never understand straight people, I swear…”
He chuckled. “I’m not a psychologist but I’ve watched enough Snapped to say that, by giving something she made that he’d use, she probably felt more connected to him. And it may have been a way of giving Lucinda Hendricks the middle finger.”
The next page was just a few lines written in heavy hand. Hector Raymond Lacroix. Six lbs, eighteen inches.
“Lacroix,” Julian breathed. “Paul Lacroix Hendricks…”
“Damn it,” I groaned, sitting back on my heels. “I’m going to need to get out the pendulum, aren’t I? Are you lot going to talk to me, hm? We’ll be out of your hair faster if you just spill!” I rarely got so irritated with spirits but these were trying times…
Julian closed both books and rose to his feet, tugging me with him. “I think,” he said slowly, softly, “we’ve done all we can for tonight.” He didn’t let go of my hands. Instead, he took half a step closer to me until we were nearly chest to chest. “Is this okay?”
The room vibrated with presence, a swirl of lemon verbena and starch and angst that rode with the maid’s arrival. I closed my eyes and gritted my teeth. I refused to be cock blocked by a ghost.
“Hey,” Julian said again, giving my fingers a squeeze. “I asked you something…”
“Sorry. I just—”
“Is this okay?”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Julian
“Is this okay?”
“Why?”
“Um, because it’s polite to ask before kissing someone?” I said, a tiny splash of metaphorical cold water numbing the edges of my arousal.
“No, I mean, why do you want to kiss me?” He cringed, his eyes crinkling adorably behind his glasses. “Sorry, It’s just, I was fairly certain you did but now that it’s happening, I want to make sure... You’ve had a weird week and I don’t want this to be something you regret.” Fellowes swayed towards me, almost closing the distance.
“I don’t think I will,” I answered honestly. “Why would I?”
“I’m… me,” he said, eyes still closed. “Sometimes it’s hard for romantic interests to see me as a man and not some character they’ve built up in their heads.” He winced, leaning forward to press his forehead against my shoulder. “I swear I’m an actual adult man who has had relationships and intimate encounters before, no matter how dorky I sound.”
“Intimate encounters makes it sound like very polite porn.”
“Well,” he breathed, “I am English.” He tipped his face up and brought his lips to mine, first just a brush of skin on skin. Barely a whisper of sensation but still enough to send a jolt straight through me, pooling heat in my balls. He sighed and reached up, his fingers tangling in my hair where it had gotten too long over my ears. “This calls for someplace more comfortable,” he murmured against the corner of my mouth. “Upstairs?”
“Library’s closer,” I whispered. No one was around to hear us but it felt imperative that we be quiet, keep it close between us.
Fellowes laughed. “Are you sure? Aren’t you afraid of your ghost?” he teased, already taking me by the hand. When I rolled my eyes at him, he laughed again. “Might as well give them a show, if they’re there, hm? Being dead is dull, from what I gather.”
I had a thousand questions to ask him, none of which were conducive to sexy times, and the fact he was already unbuttoning his shirt when we crossed into the library put that curiosity neatly away in a mental lock box, at least for a little while. Or, if I had my way, more than a little while.
He led me to the sofa, tugging me down beside him before leaning in again. This time, the kiss was definitely not tentative. Definitely exploratory. I wasn’t uneasy in the room anymore, thoughts entirely on Fellowes and how he felt against me, hoping he liked how I felt against him. “This okay?” he asked against my neck, teeth scraping over a tendon. I arched, gasping, into his arms. I’m not sure which one of us was laughing so breathlessly, or if it was both of us. I do know how his skin felt under my palms (smooth, soft, bumps over his ribs, hard peaks of nipples I was dying to suck, flat and taut over his stomach, a soft trail of hair leading even lower). I know how he tasted (soda, fries, a hint of menthol from his bad habit he must have indulged in some time between the library earlier and the kitchen). I know how I felt (like flying apart when he drew my tongue into his mouth). “Well?” he asked when he let me up for a breath.
“I think you’re sexy,” I said on a rush. “And I… I don’t know. I want you. You’re nothing like I was expecting.” He sighed into the next kiss as I slid my hands down his back, grabbing the neat globes of his ass in a tight squeeze that turned his sigh into a groan. “Fuck, I’m so glad Cec badgered me into this damn show,” I laughed, nearly breathless against his chin, a hint of teeth making him gasp before something moved through him, a change in h
is demeanor that set off a little warning bell in my lizard back-brain. Shit… How did I just fuck this up?
He rocked back, still holding me but putting a few cold inches of distance between us and a frown on his lips. “This isn’t some… some attempt to, I don’t know... Manipulate things? Get me on your side when we’re filming or something?”
Hello, cold water. “Do you think I’m that sort of person? Try to seduce you into… What? Admitting you’re a con artist? Seriously? Even if I thought you were one.” I left out the anymore but I think we both knew. No, I am sure of it. Sitting next to him made me feel agitated, too big for my skin and hot all over in a not fun way. I shoved myself to my feet and smoothed my shirt back down, tried to ignore the warm tingle still swimming in my gut. “I’m flattered you think I have a magic dick that can fundamentally change who you are.”
Fellowes’ scowl, a frozen mask of defensive anger, melted into a laugh. “Did you just say magic dick? Oh my God...”
His cackle could have woken the dead. “Um...”
“Sorry, sorry,” he gasped. “Magic dick, though.” He patted the cushion next to him, his breath still ruffling with amusement. “Come on, then. Sit down and let me apologize. I’m just a bit confused and surprised and pleased… Well, hopefully I’ll be more pleased in a bit, hm?”
Reluctantly, I sat back down beside him. He pulled me against his side with one arm, raking the fingers of his other hand through the hair on my nape, teasing the skin just beneath my collar. We sat in silence for a long minute, quiet stretching between us until it had to be broken. “I thought you were weirdly hot yesterday. And earlier today, after the...” I waved towards the stairs. “I just wanted. And it confused me. Not because you’re a guy, so stop giving me that look. I’m queer as a three dollar bill so that was never a question. I was confused because I thought I should be more scared. Angry even, I should have been tearing the room apart to find out how the cabinet fell open, how the cart was over set. Instead I was just… wanting you.”
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